New RINO talking points. Higher taxes and austerity for all

[jmdrake]

So did Wesley Snipes.

So did Donald Trump and he's never gone to prison over that.

 

[jmdrake]

Typical... a discussion about taxation veers off into a screed about the Fed when the screeder suddenly realizes he can't defend his idea about eliminating income taxes. This change-the-subject techique is SO predictable.

You're not being honest here. You started talking about all the extra money some states get. That doesn't come from taxes. It comes from debt which is created by the Federal Reserve. So it makes perfect sense for someone to rebut you from talking about the Federal Reserve.

 

[acptulsa]

Bullshyt. A large percentage of rich people have "no skin in the game" and they can't have any skin in the game because the game is rigged to keep them from having skin in the game. And taxing younger people at the current rate while reducing their future social security benefits is theft. If you support theft that's on you. Letting younger people opt out of social security altogether or turning social security from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan would be ethical.

But, of course, Sonny talks about poor people paying no income tax, then turns around and talks about entitlement spending, as though social security is financed through income tax, rather than FICA tax. And as though the working poor don't pay the latter, though that's liable to sap nearly twenty percent of their meager incomes.

Of course, FICA tax is an income tax. But it's "FICA tax", not "income tax". Self-styled masters of the universe like Sonny don't make that distinction. It all looks the same to them. So when they hear that the working poor pay no "income tax", they assume they pay everyone's social security. They probably also assume everyone gets as much as they do. Neither assumption has any basis for reality. In fact, many of the working poor pay nineteen percent, then live eight or nine percent of their lives collecting sixty or seventy percent of their previous incomes, poorly adjusted for inflation. All because the law was written eighty-six years ago, when it was assumed this would be needed to support their widows; now their widows paid the same all along.

But then, Sonny has no clue what the working poor go through, only what additional torment he can dream up for them to endure.

 

[ClaytonB]

Typical... a discussion about taxation veers off into a screed about the Fed when the screeder suddenly realizes he can't defend his idea about eliminating income taxes. This change-the-subject techique is SO predictable.

It is the subject. If I have a printing press and I can print up as much money as I want, why do I need anybody to send me taxes, so I can dole it back out to them?? It's just a shell-game and it's legalized bribery. If the Federal government actually had to operate only on the revenues it collects through taxation (including income taxation), there would be no way that it could afford to send any money back to the States, or overseas for "foreign aid". This is the entire purpose for which the Federal Reserve was originally conceived. It is the ultimate corruption machine. The money taxed away from the States is not "redistributed" back to them, rather, the Federal government directly taxes all US citizens both through direct taxation of income (yes, direct taxation of income!), through inflation, and through regulatory hurdles that ensure that every business that is part of the financial establishment enjoys immense competitive advantages vis-a-vis any business that attempts to survive outside of it.

The Federal Reserve is not the first central bank in US history, it is the third. And it is directly patterned on the bank of England, which was founded in 1694. With more than three centuries of history of inflationary paper money, there is one pattern throughout: the central bank and the State of which it is a vassal can never resist the urge to continue counterfeiting past the point of monetary collapse. No inflationary paper money has ever lasted more than a handful of decades. The current US dollar regime is about 50 years old (dating to 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window), but should be practically counted as just a little over a decade old, since the 2008 housing collapse and subsequent QE-forever, a fundamental change to monetary policy that is legally tantamount to reconstitution.

The Federal income tax cannot be rightly understood without understanding the Federal Reserve system, both of which began in 1913. The previous central banks failed precisely because the Federal government had no sustained, unapportioned income tax. The war-time income tax was spotty and short-lived. Without a nationwide Federal income tax, the central bank had no believable "sales pitch"... why deposit your cash in New York, when you can earn the same rate in Kansas City, and your cash is closer? There had to be a systematic tax-advantage for the big commercial banks and their Frankensteinian cartel creature, the Fed, in order to tilt the playing field and ensure copious demand for the tax-favored accounts at the Fed.

The other important role of Federal income taxation along with inflation is that it allows the Fed to mix ordinary tax revenues with the revenues it creates via the printing-press. This is most easily seen in the nature of open market operations. Why does the Federal Reserve bother buying bonds at all? Why not just drop off pallets of cash at the Treasury Department? It would be a lot simpler and cheaper to just directly print cash and drop it off. (I'm speaking metaphorically, obviously, the money is just written into a ledger, which is even cheaper.) The point is, why does the Fed bother to go through this charade of having a "balance sheet" at all? Well, the answer is that the market for foreign, state/county/local, and private purchasers of US bonds "mixes" with the Fed's toxicity and lends it some air of legitimacy. It's a very fragile system that could collapse at any time. But the con has worked so far. The important thing is that these non-Fed buyers lend legitimacy to the Fed's real purpose which is simply to add digits to the US government's accounts whenever the US government would like to have more cash to spend. It's a shell game that confuses the vast majority of Americans which, in itself, exposes its true anti-freedom purpose and pedigree. It is tyranny incarnate.

So, the regular stream of Federal income taxes helps further mix down the toxicity of Fed revenues. The architecture of this system is so sweeping that it is almost impossible to exaggerate it. Even before the 2008 housing collapse, the whole concept of the "30-year mortgage" which is "just part of the American dream", is an integral tool for decreasing the liquidity of the typical American household. 401ks and IRAs are also an important part of this recipe for widespread, popular illiquidity. A population whose future revenues are locked into a 30-year debt obligation and whose assets are locked away in "tax-advantaged" retirement vehicles is illiquid. The vast majority of these assets are not under the direction of their actual owners and so can be corralled into asset classes that the financial overlords determine will help conceal and mask the real rate of inflation. In this way, the Fed can print a veritable ocean of cash without driving up the price of "politically sensitive" goods (e.g. gas, energy, food) at nearly the real rate of inflation. The unapportioned, direct income tax was merely the first "inflation camouflage" vehicle of many such vehicles that have been instituted since then.

Income tax is a direct tax. It is unconstitutional, that's why an amendment was needed to ensure that the income tax would be able to continue indefinitely without legal challenge in SCOTUS. The income tax, in turn, plays an integral role in camouflaging the inflationary revenues the Federal government receives from the Fed's money-printing. And the Fed's money printing makes Washington, DC the global money fountain, par excellence. It is the Ring of Power.

Hans Hoppe explains how DC exports our inflation overseas through the Fed, thereby taxing the citizens of foreign countries. And you would like us to believe that US citizens are the only serfs in this shell game! Far from it. It is an interlocking system of imperial exploitation, built on criminal trickery, fraud and counterfeiting of the most audacious and blatant form. The dynamics of US imperial taxation of Germany through inflationary central banking (so-called "dollar reserves") is no different, in substance, from the taxation of US citizens through the same system. The only difference is that we also make direct payments to DC, in addition to the inflationary exploitation. And it is the direct taxes that US citizens pay that ensure that the system is "stable", meaning, DC will continue being able to project its imperial foreign military stance and extract inflationary revenues on the backs of all people who fall under the umbrella of the US empire.

Central banking had been around for more than a century by the time of the Founding Fathers. They knew its dangers, its power and the seductive appeal it could make to the ambitious within the US. Americans repulsed a central bank for another century until the Federal Reserve Act and the questionable passage of the 16th Amendment. It was a heist, a scam, illegal, and it was indeed a "smoke-filled backroom conspiracy of fatcats" to permanently enslave America. You can argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin until you're blue in the face, but you can't alter the actual facts of history. The Federal income tax is the siamese twin of the Federal Reserve.

 

[acptulsa]

When the delegates to the convention realize that the states and citizens they represent are gonna lose a huge chunk of the federal money they've been getting in the form of grants, wages from federal jobs, Social Security benefits, etc, they will give an enormous damn, especially the delegates from the 40 or so states that receive more than they pay out in taxes. Of course, he'll take that as his cue to point out that Amtrak's losses are a small part of the budget. But that doesn't mean I'm going to sit here and renumerate every such example.

It is the subject. If I have a printing press and I can print up as much money as I want, why do I need anybody to send me taxes, so I can dole it back out to them??

Isn't it amazing that he can look at the numbers, and quote the numbers, and completely fail to understand the numbers? Ten states donate all that to the other forty, and pay the massive overhead of all those overpaid bureaucrats too? Seriously? Of course the inflationary borrowing, and printing of the junk bond "debt instruments" which are jokingly called "dollars" make up that gap, and of course the resulting devaluation makes the poor more poor. And enough people are figuring that out that federal largess hasn't got half the appeal he thinks it still has.

He's also a little fuzzy on which states are the "donor states". Everyone supports Amtrak, for example. But when Oklahoma wanted one lousy train, the state was flatly told to support it with state revenue. Delaware and Connecticut are between Manhattan, and Washington and Boston, respectively. They don't hear, "pay for it yourself", though they're both wealthier states than Oklahoma. But, of course, Amtrak is ostensibly "nationwide", so its "losses" get laundered right out when the determination is made of which states are the leaches.

Which is just a troll cue for, "Amtrak is a small part of the budget." But that doesn't mean I have either the time or the inclination to sit here and enumerate every such example.

 

[jmdrake]

But, of course, Sonny talks about poor people paying no income tax, then turns around and talks about entitlement spending, as though social security is financed through income tax, rather than FICA tax. And as though the working poor don't pay the latter, though that's liable to sap nearly twenty percent of their meager incomes.

Of course, FICA tax is an income tax. But it's "FICA tax", not "income tax". Self-styled masters of the universe like Sonny don't make that distinction. It all looks the same to them. So when they hear that the working poor pay no "income tax", they assume they pay everyone's social security. They probably also assume everyone gets as much as they do. Neither assumption has any basis for reality. In fact, many of the working poor pay nineteen percent, then live eight or nine percent of their lives collecting sixty or seventy percent of their incomes, poorly adjusted for inflation. All because the law was written eighty-six years ago, when it was assumed this would be needed to support their widows; now their widows paid the same all along.

But then, Sonny has no clue what the working poor go through, only what additional torment he can dream up for them to endure.

Actually I was responding to Krugminator2 but yeah.

 

[ClaytonB]

Isn't it amazing that he can look at the numbers, and quote the numbers, and completely fail to understand the numbers? Ten states donate all that to the other forty, and pay the massive overhead of all those overpaid bureaucrats too? Seriously? Of course the inflationary borrowing, and printing of the junk bond "debt instruments" which are jokingly called "dollars" make up that gap, and of course the resulting devaluation makes the poor more poor. And enough people are figuring that out that federal largess hasn't got half the appeal he thinks it still has.

He's also a little fuzzy on which states are the "donor states". Everyone supports Amtrak, for example. But when Oklahoma wanted one lousy train, the state was flatly told to support it with state revenue. Delaware and Connecticut are between Manhattan and Washington and Boston, respectively. They don't hear, "pay for it yourself", though they're both wealthier states than Oklahoma. But, of course, Amtrak is ostensibly "nationwide", so its "losses" get laundered right out when the determination is made of which states are the leaches.

Which is just a troll cue for, "Amtrak is a small part of the budget." But that doesn't mean I have either the time or the inclination to sit here and enumerate every such example.

It's standard leftist delusion. The "picture" being "painted" is that the Federal government "levels the States", so that "rich" States "help" "poor" States. This is supposed to be some kind of weird analogy to how our "progressive" tax schedule supposedly "levels" the "playing field" by "taxing the rich" and then "giving to the poor". In reality, Federal grants are just another form of foreign aid, and they serve exactly the same purpose as foreign aid does. Foreign aid allows US politicians and those in their political orbit to legally launder funds through foreign nations where accounting is effectively impossible and bribery is just part of day-to-day business. US contractors (whether private or NGO) who work in those countries materially benefit from their political contacts back home who guide the foreign aid into those countries and sectors. In turn, political favorites can be appointed to the board of directors of these businesses and NGOs who are receiving sweetheart deals. Regardless of the state of current laws and regulations designed to prevent corruption, the legislators are the very people who author those laws and regulations and need only step one foot beyond the bright-line boundaries of those laws and regulations to avoid being investigated and held legally accountable for corruption. Why this needs to be explained is a mystery I do not believe I will ever solve, but there it is for anyone who can't or won't figure it out for themselves.

In the US, the redistribution of Federal money collected from the States accomplishes exactly the same purpose but it is primarily directed at securing the presidential election and the other major Federal seats. This is why the presidential election frequently comes down to just a small number of counties in a small number of states. Both parties have jockeyed their domestic corruption networks into the best position for the major Federal seats. So the entire US political map is effectively a battlefield and the primary cannons deployed on that battlefield are Federal grant monies and other Federal favors. In this way, the Republican national committee and Democrat national committee wield near absolute power over their own subordinates, and the overall platform of each respective party is primarily designed to defend the Federal political turf of the party, or invade seats they believe are weak and can be captured.

But none of this really makes any sense until you factor in the Fed. It is the Fed that is the real Ring of Power and it cannot be captured, controlled or even influenced by any election. Rather, the money from the Fed fuels both foreign aid and Federal grant monies (and the MIC) so that the political favorites of the hidden power behind the Fed rise to the top, and those who fall out of step with the will of the Fed simply disappear into the mists of political oblivion. In short, the two-party system at the Federal level is a political architecture. It is not the result of any sort of organic, grassroots political activity and wholly reflects the intentions of the power behind the Fed, and nothing else besides.

PS: For those who believe it is somehow magically impossible to legally launder money within the US (because "the FBI would catch you and the laws have no loopholes"), I present to you "Comedian (2019)", which sold for $120,000:

 

[Pauls' Revere]

Flat Tax.

 

[acptulsa]

Actually I was responding to Krugminator2 but yeah.

Yes, you were. And I was responding to that other mass of unmeasurable density who actually thinks the working poor have no skin in the social security game. If they can tag team, and riff of each other, so can we.

We can haz tactics. They don't get to patent them. Hell, we can even haz silly little check marks.



Would you like one too?

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

So did Wesley Snipes.

You thinking Danke in prison?

 

[Snowball]

Uniparty strikes again.

Oligarchs, Kleptocrats and Marionettes

Inflate, Debase, Automate, and Expand...

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

Forcing everyone to comply with an agenda with threat of prison seems wrong. I equate that to the old days when a sharecropper was mandated to buy everything from the owner and could never get ahead. If ever there was a time to make taxation voluntary it is now. All this division in opinion should be supported not by theft or extortion of our money but by voluntary support from all the people that support any particular agenda.

 

[Krugminator2]

Bullshyt. A large percentage of rich people have "no skin in the game" and they can't have any skin in the game because the game is rigged to keep them from having skin in the game.

Top 1%, Top 10% and any measure of top income earners shows them paying higher percentage of tax than percentage of income earned. When you use just income tax, it is extremely skewed. It isn't fair to equate forced savings like payroll taxes which the payer gets back with income taxes but even; when you you do it is still doesn't change the fact that taxes are steeply progressive. You can add up percentages of what each income group pays here. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/are-federal-taxes-progressive If fairness were the goal it would either make sense to increase taxes on the lower 20% by 6 fold or reduce taxes on the upper 1% by 6 fold.

When you are talking about the super rich who don't pay taxes, you are mostly talking about people who have appreciation in the value of assets. If Elon Musk or Warren Buffett have ownership shares that go up in value, they don't pay taxes. Nor should they. That isn't income.You should only pay taxes when you sell. Forcing Elon Musk to systematically sell off his own company to pay taxes on the shares he was forced to liquidate like Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden are proposing is ridiculous.

And taxing younger people at the current rate while reducing their future social security benefits is theft. If you support theft that's on you. Letting younger people <strong>opt out</strong>of social security altogether or turning social security from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan would be ethical.

I am for reducing benefits for current recipients and would like to see some sort of lump sum payout like is an option for defined benefit plans. I would like to see the programs eliminated.

The programs are bankrupt. Underfunded by 100s of trillions. Nothing is free. In bankruptcy you take a haircut. In a sense, cutting entitlements is the only issue that matters because of how large the numbers are.

It's <strong>more ridiculous to penalize people for actually working!</strong> Trust babies didn't save. Their parents and grandparents did. But you want to skin people...excuse me "make sure they have skin in the game." Stealing and skinning people. That's the Romney way. You want everyone to have skin in the game? Get rid of the income tax altogether. Only have tariffs and value added taxes. Tax consumption rather than working. Oh...but then you wouldn't have your slaves anymore to push around.

Capital gains and corporate taxes tend to get borne by wage earners. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lets-move-consumption-tax-veronique-de-rugy/

All taxes are consumption taxes. It just matters whether you are taxing present or future consumption. I am for a progressive consumption tax as outlined here. https://www.themoneyillusion.com/time-neutral-consumption-taxes/ The example is especially good about how capital gains should be thought of.

I used to be for a big inheritance tax but it would incentivize the productive people who created the wealth to retire earlier while they were alive and spend it and wind down productive businesses.

 

[Krugminator2]

It's more ridiculous to penalize people for actually working!

Imagine a country where everyone earns exactly the same wage income, $80,000/year from age 25 to 65. No one inherits any money.The only investment is a safe asset that earns a 5% rate of return. Assume no inflation.

Some people like to save a lot for future consumption, while others spend their money today and save very little. What do we know about this world?

1. There is substantial income inequality.
2. There is lots of inequality in measured wealth.
3. Actual wealth is identical, in the sense that every single person has identical lifetime consumption in present value terms.(Wealth, properly measured, is supposed to represent the present value of future expected consumption, for you and those to whom you give money.)

The society that I described does not have any economic inequality, in any meaningful sense. Everyone has exactly the same amount of resources to work with over their lives; they simply choose to spend their money at different points in time.

I thought this example was so good that it should get its own post.

 

[oyarde]

You thinking Danke in prison?

At least fifty percent plausible at this time .

 

[jmdrake]

When you are talking about the super rich who don't pay taxes, you are mostly talking about people who have appreciation in the value of assets. If Elon Musk or Warren Buffett have ownership shares that go up in value, they don't pay taxes. Nor should they. That isn't income.You should only pay taxes when you sell. Forcing Elon Musk to systematically sell off his own company to pay taxes on the shares he was forced to liquidate like Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden are proposing is ridiculous.

This quote right here shows your slave mentality. THERE SHOULD BE NO INCOME TAX PERIOD! We went over 100 years without an income tax. If you don't understand that basic truth, you cannot understand any other truth. Why should someone be taxed for working? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you are a slaveowner (Warren Buffet) or you have a slave mentality. "It's so wonderful my massah gets to out of paying taxes for owning assets (me) while I get taxed for the privilege of working to put food on my table."

 

[jmdrake]

Yes, you were. And I was responding to that other mass of unmeasurable density who actually thinks the working poor have no skin in the social security game. If they can tag team, and riff of each other, so can we.

We can haz tactics. They don't get to patent them. Hell, we can even haz silly little check marks.



Would you like one too?

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to acptulsa again.

 

[jmdrake]

I thought this example was so good that it should get its own post.

Example of what exactly? You posting mindless dribble? Umm....okay.

 

[Krugminator2]

This quote right here shows your slave mentality. THERE SHOULD BE NO INCOME TAX PERIOD! We went over 100 years without an income tax. If you don't understand that basic truth, you cannot understand any other truth. Why should someone be taxed for working? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you are a slaveowner (Warren Buffet) or you have a slave mentality. "It's so wonderful my massah gets to out of paying taxes for owning assets (me) while I get taxed for the privilege of working to put food on my table."

I don't have anything else to add outside of what I already said.

Capital gains and corporate taxes tend to get borne by wage earners. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lets-move-consumption-tax-veronique-de-rugy/

All taxes are consumption taxes. It just matters whether you are taxing present or future consumption. I am for a progressive consumption tax as outlined here. https://www.themoneyillusion.com/time-neutral-consumption-taxes/
.

 

[Krugminator2]

Example of what exactly? You posting mindless dribble? Umm....okay.

I thought it was pretty profound.